Accommodations
by Laryna6
Summary: Running an errand as a favor for X requires dressing in human clothing. A... something posing as a reploid posing as a human to do a favor for the android he was built to kill. Commander Zero might ask how was this his life if he wasn't choosing, every minute of every day, to keep on living this way. Giftfic for NHOrus.


_Birthday giftfic for NHOrus, not all that belated compared to some other giftfics I owe. I hope you enjoy it!_

_Given the amount of effect our bodies have on our minds and what kind of people we are (brain injuries, how twins raised apart will have more in common than twins raised together...), it's interesting to think of what it might be like for a being engineered to be a living weapon._

_Xenofiction - writing nonhuman mentalities - is fun, and it's interesting to think of what a mind that doesn't think like us and doesn't have our social 'it's this way because that's the way it is' logic hole would think of a lot of our foibles. _

_A lot of versions of X series have a repressive, racist human government, but _the Irregular Hunters weren't government-run_. A society that allows that much reploid firepower, the only organization that can actually fight reploids, to exist as an NGO (non-governmental organization), with no government military that could stand against it, that can come in and help X when Sigma goes crazy? Cain Labs/the Hunters are an NGO Superpower. Something like that wouldn't have been allowed to happen if there was a strong enough united government to come in later and take it over, and Sigma's various attacks were probably calculated to break the backs of human government and potential human resistance. _

_Remember, Sigma isn't out to fight reploids. He's out to win them over and infect them. A dead reploid is a waste, from the virus' perspective. The reploid-on-reploid violence the game highlights is _collateral damage _in the process of trying to wipe out humanity. As badly as the Hunters have been battered, human power structures that might have tried to oppose Sigma or reploids would have gotten it much, much worse - think about Repliforce, and Sigma wasn't trying to wipe them out so much as steal them, one way or another. If there was a human with the power to take the Hunters out from under a world hero like X Light, brother of Mega Man, father of the reploid race, Sigma would have taken them out, or forced them into hiding, and it's hard to keep your power base when you're running scared._

_I keep seeing references to "Jane's Guide To Military Weapons" and "Jane's Guide to Naval Ships" and such and such in various books. Apparently they're a British publishing company that specializes in military, transportation and aerospace reference books that are considered the definitive guides by the intelligence and other communities. _

_Barely-there reference to Patlabor. I just wanted to give it a nod._

* * *

Zero looked down into the box. He didn't have to express his irritation. It was understood.

The top part was a simple t-shirt that wouldn't restrict the movement of his arms. Green, because green wasn't associated with either of them and also probably because X just liked the color. He'd also mentioned something about it being a good thing if clothing matched your eyes or highlighted the color, which was important for humans whose genes didn't produce eye pigment and therefore their eyes only appeared to be colors other than black and brown because of refraction and colors picked up from the environment and the nearby lighting. Since Zero's eyes were probably going to look green anyway (unless they were attacked, although the stress of having to keep someone alive through that might keep them from calming to blue), better make sure that he was in conditions where eyes could normally appear green.

At least his blond hair was a similar mutation caused by two copies of a damaged gene, or would be if he was human, and apparently people who had one set of broken genes were more likely to have the other get broken too than average humans. Why humans thought that malfunctioning systems were aesthetically pleasing would have been nonsensical if Zero hadn't known that X was an android, more similar to humans than most reploids, and X got bored when everything was the same color all the time, which was why he didn't ever wear a single piece of blue civilian clothing unless he had to for the sake of being recognized as Commander X.

So maybe that desire for some variety in their lives was why humans would go so far as to hit up sperm banks so their children would have malfunctional hair and optic colors. He'd asked X if there was a similarly prized broken skin pigment gene, but apparently that one had too many negative health effects since that pigment was an important component of their built-in radiation shielding. Zero was sure that otherwise, humans would be all for white skin with blue and red stripes.

The long brown leather gloves were going to restrict his hand movements a _little_, but even though no human clothing was an acceptable substitute for armor, they'd provide at least some amount of protection that would be worthwhile if Zero was actually a human. If in the course of this he had to do something that might have injured a human, then wearing some protective gear would cause fewer questions when he wasn't injured. If he was going to be driving a ride chaser for this, he'd have needed a leather jacket, too. A leather jacket and leather…

Pants.

Now he glared down at them.

"I got you the kind for martial artists, Zero," X said patiently.

"They make a stupid idea slightly less bad, they don't make those… _things_ anything a warrior would ever wear."

"A lot of human warrior cultures would have agreed with you. Unfortunately, climate was a concern, and giving their legs at least some protection against skidding on rock and sharp plants. I know you don't like restricting your range of motion when you don't have any armor to compensate for it, but you agreed to this." If Zero wanted to pass for a male human, he was going to have to wear the damn things.

"The entire point is to not be recognized as Commander Zero, isn't it? So why can't I wear something practical?"

"The mission is to not be recognized _after _the parents have put their child in your hands." After Zero had convinced him that yes, he was Commander Zero, and a normal, responsible person despite this.

"Shouldn't a better disguise-"

"Zero."

"And hair this long is associated with female models anyway, isn't it? So if they see a male model with hair like mine, that's odd, but a female model…"

"You started a trend, Zero. It's fashionable now."

"Then I don't see why I can't…"

"Zero. I realize that reducing your combat potential bothers you. I'm well aware of what happened when someone tried to put you in a suit."

Sigma. Not all that long after Zero had joined the hunters. When he was still the Red Demon in the eyes of everyone but Sigma, X, Dr. Cain. When human clothing signaled that someone was less of a threat, both to reploids and humans, and formal clothing was a mark of civilization. When he'd had very little awareness of his own body, of his strange systems. At first he'd been uncomfortable because people were looking at him, studying him, and Medical hadn't been very pleasant when X and Dr. Cain weren't present. There was also the strangeness of all those looks and measurements _not _being hostile.

He knew what admiration looked like now, recognized the look in someone's eyes when they looked at him and saw something _glorious_, not a monster, but then it was one more new, strange thing that probably was going to end unpleasantly. Most things did, when he'd killed so many people's comrades and didn't know how to…

His tactical systems had been deeply unhappy, but then his tactical systems had been deeply unhappy the entire day.

In hindsight, he knew that he got the same discomfort from being around humans period as he did from being around armed and hostile reploids even though the danger posed by humans was fairly insignificant because he was supposed to be killing both of them. Back then, it all faded into a blur of suppressed… not fear, he wasn't capable of fear, but anxiousness, the expectation of attack, always having to sit on energy his systems were trying to release in order to fuel defense against that attack. Or taking the offensive himself.

Sigma was calming because Sigma had brought him in alive. Sigma was his ally, in this place.

Sigma was infected.

Dr. Cain, well, another old scientist figured in his dreams. So Dr. Cain he hadn't wanted to kill.

His systems were calm around X for an entirely different reason. Quiet. Allowing for calm analysis. Not giving himself away. Waiting for him to choose the perfect moment to attack.

In hindsight, it was a little odd that Sigma had delivered him into the hands of mostly-humans, but then Sigma hadn't consciously known what exactly Zero was, not then, and it might even have been X's idea, so people could look at Zero and see something other than a killer.

There was no question that he must have been gorgeous in whatever they finally stuck him in. He was gorgeous by default, and he doubted professionals would have done anything but highlight that. But he'd never gotten a good look at it. He hadn't even finished walking over to the mirror when his body started freaking out about how there was something tangled around his legs, and when he wasn't in armor his survival depended on his ability to dodge. It didn't move out of the way obediently the way his hair should have, and searching for things to compare it to, his memory could only pull up being restrained in the medical lab, and the hands that were clenched into fists at his sides, trying to keep control even though people were staring at him, opened up and _get it off me_.

How could humans stand to wear those suits? Closely-fitted ones had superior aesthetics, but the cost of that? There was some human spy in movies that was known for preferring suits, but that was ridiculous. A humans' only protection was _always _not getting hit. No warrior except a suicidal one would willingly wear suits. Or was that the humans' idea? To make sure the gender with chemicals that made them stupidly aggressive was too tied up to do any actual damage before security took them down at important events with important people present, while the half of that population without that handicap was walking around advertising how deadly they were so all the humans' tactical systems were well aware that if anyone did something stupid, they'd be outnumbered by strong people?

Humans were like robot masters, not like reploids: they had programming that they couldn't do anything about, so it made sense that with hundreds of thousands of years of having to live with the programming of primitive systems they'd have worked out ways to reduce the damage.

Had Sigma been pleased, that human clothing made Zero's skin crawl? The way humans in general must have made Sigma's skin crawl, by then. That absolute disgust, their existence utterly repugnant.

When X tried to get him to do something in human clothing, years later, he'd picked out a shirt that didn't even have sleeves, and stretchy shorts. The whole thing felt more like an undersuit than anything, so that was alright, but apparently it wasn't alright if you weren't going to the beach.

Humans. They clearly understood what practical clothing was, so why did they make up all these rules against ever wearing it when it would be useful?

The martial artist pants were designed to allow them to do combat moves without tearing the pants (or having to tear their pants off first), but he could still _feel _them, and maybe X was right and they felt worse than they actually were, but…

X was looking at him just slightly disappointed now, and "You didn't have to offer," he told Zero. "Please don't put yourself in positions that you know are going to make you uncomfortable just to help me."

"You said undercover," Zero pointed out.

A small sigh. "You know, most humans have to worry about being grabbed. Or getting tangled in things that are long and flowing." Scarves, capes, Zero's hair. Long slit skirts.

Zero snorted a little.

"Yes, I realize that your hair is bait." Anyone who grabbed it would be getting in melee range of Zero, a mistake that would prove fatal very quickly. "But will you please just try them on? You've worn them before, and I'm sorry, I shouldn't ask you to do something that's unpleasant for you , but I really have to get going, Zero, and if you can't wear this then I only have seventeen minutes to try to find a trustworthy human mercenary who will take a job from an unknown person with no information upfront without selling the information to anyone, and avoiding any chance of compromised com systems."

Their spotters could pass for human in public now, but they could be infected someday. So that wasn't an option.

He'd put X in a tight spot by agreeing to this without thinking it through first just to be helpful, hadn't he?

* * *

At least his systems were okay with crowds of humans now. It was actually a lot easier when he was in human clothing. He was in the middle of a herd of his prey, and _they didn't even know_. They were completely unaware that death was already in their midst, that he could annihilate them before they had a chance of fleeing, much less getting help. It might even have given him the calmness he felt in combat, if not for his awareness of exactly _why _he was feeling this satisfied, and the worrying need to devote some of his attention to watching himself and his systems, in order to continue to pass. In order to veto all the plans for dispatching multiple opponents effectively tactical kept tossing up.

In hindsight, he did understand why Medical had all looked at him like he was a complete monster. The complete monster that he was compared to reploids, who were running _X's _solution set programming.

He'd answered their questions honestly, as best he could, and only found out later that no, most people's systems were _not _constantly helpfully informing them of how best to murder everyone around them. Calculating trajectories of kicks to send heads smashing into walls the way most people's movement systems saw a thrown ball and would predict where it was going to go and how to move in order to close their hand around it before it hit the ground.

"Hey, aren't you supposed to be watching me? Why are you staring out the window?" the young human asked, sounding disappointed but hopeful.

What he definitely didn't want to say was 'I have been watching you. My systems have already produced over two hundred context-specific ways to kill you. And, since I can define people as non-priority targets now, it's prioritizing the speed of my action and the ease of terminating several other people within the same second over the speed of your death. Some of them would leave you alive for quite awhile, surrounded by dead, dying and wounded screaming bodies, which I've been told is very unpleasant for those programmed to care about their fellow beings at all.

'Some of them would even leave you in good enough condition that it would be possible to save you, with prompt medical care and donor organs. Believe me, there would be plenty of freshly dead organs with no one using them anymore, but you're a child: your body has fewer resources to heal with, so any decent triage team would ignore you in favor of those they _could _possibly save. And, of course, your organs wouldn't be all that useful, and if they have to take a patient who's probably going to die, they'd have to at least take someone whose presence in the hospital could be used to save others. Not that I wouldn't be targeting the medical response teams, so since you'd be at the epicenter, there's absolutely no way they'd reach you before you did die.

'Unless X got here in time…'

The awareness that he was at a disadvantage was making his systems absolutely insist on running an excessive amount of those simulations, and drawing more attention to them than he'd like. It was normally a background process, but he couldn't even afford to slam the likelihood that he'd be attacked down as far as it would go, not when maverick attack was a possibility and he'd need all the situational awareness and preparation his systems could muster if that happened, between the disadvantage and the burden.

He _did not like _being on the defensive, and he was very, _very _glad for all the practice he had keeping control and not starting something just because combat, with all the screams of the dying, was so much better than the hellish waiting, the peace X wished for.

_I'm going to have to do this again_, Zero knew, even as he winced at the thought. _It's good practice_.

It hadn't taken him long to realize that he thrived on challenge… no, he'd known it all along. It wasn't until recovering that memory forced him to stop ignoring the truth and connect the dots that he connected it to X and his Infinite Potential System.

It would be easier to do this next time. And the next, and the next… Although who knew when there'd be a next time, when even he hadn't known that X was doing this.

Telling him about it was a very stupid thing for X to do, huh? When the point was to keep anyone who might go maverick from finding out about it.

Zero would have thought that X should have picked Axl, except they had confirmation now that Axl had been built at Sigma's request before either being released into the wild or getting out of wherever on his own, _and _Zero'd cut orders for Axl to do an undercover mission that he wouldn't be coming back from for another week well before the Federation Council decided to do something stupid and X had to take off his 'Commander X of the Elite Seventeenth' helmet and put on his 'Dr. X Light of the Cain Foundation' hat to run damage control.

This was actually pretty rare, these days: not that the Council pulling stupid stunts was rare, but after decades of trying to maintain operational security so the mavericks didn't find out about things they shouldn't, usually the press and X didn't find out either until everything had gone to hell and it was a job for Commander X. Lumine, for example.

Zero was just grateful that since the Irregular Hunters had started out as a humanitarian assistance project by Cain Labs, taking down and fixing poor misbuilt irregulars no matter who built them and then often pressing charges, they still weren't _government _-run. Oh, he'd heard that in the early days of the Irregular Hunters becoming the Maverick Hunters a lot of the human military had thought they could come in and throw their weight around, but that was over by the time he came back to life. Cain Labs, now the Cain Foundation, had never _been _for-profit, and with Dr. Cain's passing, X owned seventy-five percent, and the missing twenty-five would pass to him whenever one of the attempts to assassinate Signas, Dr. Cain's last living son unless you thought Sigma counted as 'living,' succeeded.

Which meant he owned all the hunters' facilities and equipment, since he was the one who had it all built and made for them. The Cain Labs part of the Cain Foundation 'donated' it to the Maverick Hunter part of the Cain Foundation. Zero got the feeling that the military contractors had been more pissed off by the whole situation, and the loss of all that profit, than the actual military, especially once the actual military got a look at the equipment and living quarters the Hunters got out of all this. Since X wasn't in favor of people dying, and really wasn't in favor of people dying because of substandard equipment and poor living conditions, he'd thrown his own political weight behind a reformation of military spending that the analysts saw as a shrewd move and Zero saw as both X being X _and _a shrewd move. X might be innocent and too kind for his own good, but Zero had met X after he and Dr. Cain had spent years trying to ensure that reploids would be built owning their own bodies and with decent rights. If X had ever been naïve, he'd grown out of it fast.

Nationalizing the Hunters, effectively _stealing _from a world hero, was fortunately obviously dumb enough that the council itself shut down any of its members who seriously suggested it. Shifting the Maverick Hunters from reploid control to human control would give maverick propaganda a field day like there hadn't been since Repliforce.

A significant number of _non-infected reploids who should have known better _had given their support to Sigma during the Eurasia Incident because of what they thought Repliforce meant about the state of reploid rights.

The world could _not _afford a repeat.

They called him naïve because he trusted people, but it was only because he trusted that Zero was here, doing this. Attempting to make conversation with a human child, at the moment, that was looking up at him with big eyes. Trying to flatter him, was he? Make it clear how much he admired Zero. Not to mention that large eyes were supposed to identify young humans in need of looking after. Like trainees.

Who _didn't _want Commander Zero to think they were worth training?

Zero might not have recognized the Adopt Me (I'll learn fast and kill annoying people for you!) look if Axl didn't have it down to a science. He supposed he was lucky he had some protective instincts, even if they were probably supposed to be devoted towards mavericks instead of mostly X.

Still, identifying the human as 'like Axl' helped, just like 'X wanted this one alive' did.

"I'm keeping an eye on things," he told the kid, which was honest enough. Most of the people in the bus (trains were choke points in transit, too easy to target) with window seats were doing the same thing he was. Especially after seeing that there was a kid on board. Children _rarely _left their home cities, not until they were older.

They were still in _a _city, this wasn't exactly tractless waste. They'd be switching to air transit when things got to this point. They were still in a reploid area.

The buses were the same, and the windows could only be seen through one way, for obvious reasons.

"Can I see?" the kid asked hopefully. He wouldn't have been in a reploid city before, not any kid his age and especially not this one.

"I'm staying in the window seat," Zero told him. An attack could come just as easily from the other side of the bus, but the odds were better if he looked out the side he could look out, and didn't have a kid in the way if he had to fire. Or cut an emergency exit into the side.

"Can I look over you?" the kid asked, undaunted.

"Sure," Zero said, expecting the kid to lean forward and peer around him, but not really expecting him to lean towards Zero as well, leaning eagerly enough that they came into contact, even if there was still clothing between them.

Zero was wondering what the kid thought he was doing, or if he was just oblivious to the fact there was something called personal space, especially when curious about something. It was a relief that his systems didn't seem to care. Other people got jumpy when others came too close to them. For Zero's instincts, it just lowered the odds that the boy could survive Zero reaching out and snapping his neck by a sadly infinitesimal percentage.

Well, alright, it did bother him a little when people got too closer when they were X. And Iris. The ones he didn't want to kill, and were they trying to get themselves killed. But he knew that humans (and X, and Iris) appreciated physical contact in a sort of 'this person isn't going to kill me' systems check, so he didn't mind anything that made sure the kid wouldn't get nervous. So far, he was just excited, even though he must have been told how dangerous this was. Maybe he believed that Commander Zero was invincible: too many did, despite Zero's track record of relying maybe a little too much on his inability to stay dead.

Ah, so the kid was aware of what he was doing, Zero realized when the kid got a knee up under him so he could lean even more over Zero, bracing himself on Zero's knee this time. He'd taken Zero not reacting as permission. Testing the waters was intelligent, as was taking a mile once given an inch.

Barely-hidden glee was much easier to deal with than fear. Zero was not looking forward to what would happen if the kid realized even a fraction of how much danger he was really in. Simultaneous 'it's realized it should be afraid of you: kill it before it alerts the others!' and 'something that's yours/to-be-protected is reporting that it's in danger: kill the cause' when he was trying to stay undercover and _not _kill things.

As long as he stayed too excited to listen to his survival programming, Zero's job would be much easier, so spoiling the kid wasn't a bad idea, as long as it wasn't anything too dangerous, or anything that would add time onto the trip.

"What's that?" the kid asked, then seemed to realize that it might have pushed its luck: people got annoyed at incessant questioning.

Ah, data acquisition mode. Zero _loved _trainees in data acquisition mode. They listened to their elders and that made them a lot less likely to die quickly and cause paperwork for him and sadness for everyone else.

He put a proprietary hand on the kid's head. "Those are civilian construction ride armors: they call them ride labors. Most modern ones are mechanaloid-based, since it gives them better reflexes and reduces the amount of piloting skill necessary to keep them from falling over, but you'll still see ones like that, because the simpler the mechanism the harder it is to infect and the less infectious it'll be even if that does happen. All the rental ones are that type, because they get passed around from site to site and they'd make good viral vectors otherwise. Cheaper to produce, but the pilots have to be more experienced."

* * *

"The package was delivered," he told X when the other hunter got back, pushing himself off the wall where he'd been leaning, waiting for X to arrive. It was the middle of Hunter HQ, so any mavericks who hadn't been spotted yet might not be stupid enough to try anything, but X, out of armor, was a target of opportunity.

"Did you put this teleportation room on lockdown?" X asked him when he didn't see anyone else there.

"And the corridors between here and your quarters."

"Zero…"

"You're unarmored, and everyone had enough advance notice. If you don't want to be in anyone else's way, then get your aft moving," Zero said, pointing to the door.

"Are you going to keep doing this until…" X didn't have to spend all day at these sessions anymore?

"What do you think?"

X was tired enough not to argue, just pick up his pace out of consideration for any fellow commanders who might want to head back to their quarters in the officers' wing. It still was a little fascinating how different he sounded without his armor. The weight, the hydraulics. It would be nice if the desire to pounce Zero was feeling right about now wasn't some percent caused by all of that telling him that X would be a _lot _easier to kill this way. _X _didn't have his systems telling him what a bad idea it was to wear a suit, and with his physical design he needed the help to look distinguished instead of like jailbait. "I need to speak to Signas before I go to sleep. Could you com him for me?" X's secure com was in his armor, not his head, since it was Hunter issue instead of built-in.

Zero nodded. "Fifteen minutes?"

X nodded back, and Zero found himself tracking the movement of that hair, even though it was purely natural. It would only take him five to get there and armored, plus a few quick things, but once the security system verified that X's door was shut, X asked him, "How was he holding up?"

"He enjoyed the trip," Zero said.

"It's a shame that they have to leave their families, just because we can't…" Because X couldn't find a cure. Because the mavericks targeted human children above a certain IQ level. Because a budding genius couldn't stay hidden forever, not and get the training they needed, unless someone else hid them. "Thank you for getting him there safely."

"I bought him _Jane's Guide to Ride Armors _at the airport bookstore," Zero told him. "He seemed too ecstatic to be homesick."

That grateful, relieved smile, and Zero would sign up for twenty more days in clothing that should be outlawed by the safety standards people to see it on X's face again. One more burden lifted from his shoulders, and if only it was as easy to do that by killing people. "It sounds like Weil made a new friend. You didn't have any trouble, did you?"

"Not really," Zero said with a bored shrug instead of the smirk that meant there hadn't been anything that qualified as trouble for _him_, because what X didn't know about the airplane running into a swarm of wild maverick mechanaloids, he would probably be too busy to see on the news.


End file.
